


What I Was and What I Will Be

by Shi_Toyu



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, BAMF Tony Stark, Family, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Infinity Gauntlet, Infinity Gems, Spoilers, Tony Stark-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2020-02-09 22:22:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18647263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shi_Toyu/pseuds/Shi_Toyu
Summary: CONTAINS SPOILERSSummary Inside





	What I Was and What I Will Be

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Winifred_Zachery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winifred_Zachery/gifts).



> Summary:
> 
> Tony wields the gauntlet and discovers something he never could have expected.

From across the battle field, Strange made eye contact with him and held up a single finger. Tony knew what that meant. _One outcome where they succeeded._ Whatever needed to happen, it needed to happen right that second. Thor and Steve were down. Thanos had the gauntlet once more. Everyone else was locked in their own battles, unable to make it in time to do anything.

It was him.

It was Tony.

Once again, the weight of the world settled on his shoulders. His mind raced, flying through possibilities and discarding options faster than most people could even dream of them. There had to be a way, _some_ way. It had to exist because Strange had seen it. There was a way that Tony, on his own, could manage even when they had all tried time and again and failed. How many times had they restrained Thanos and tried to get the gauntlet away from him? It hadn’t worked on Titan, though that was probably the closest they’d come to succeeding.

There was no way for Tony to get the gauntlet away from Thanos before he managed to snap his fingers, especially not on his own. The nanites of the suit buzzed in response to his inner turmoil and-Oh.

Tony didn’t need to get the gauntlet away from Thanos at all, did he? The _gauntlet_ wasn’t the important part. Tony already had his own.

Tony moved, acting and reacting on desperate instinct. All he could focus on was his goal, fixing this, fixing all of this, making the universe _whole_ again. Thanos threw him off and he hit the dirt hard. He barely heard Thanos’s words about inevitability. It was more like a faint buzz in the back of his consciousness, because suddenly he couldn’t look away from his hand, where six small, glowing stones were cradled.

Tony had never gotten so close to them before. They really were beautiful, weren’t they?

The battlefield fell way. Thanos fell away. His fear for his friends and loved ones, fighting for their lives and the lives of everyone in the universe, fell away. Dark blue, nearly midnight, surrounded him like an ocean, a vastness beyond comprehension. The only points of light were the stones as they rose up out of his hand to swirl around him, forming a slowly rotating circle. As the circle turned, the stones morphed and changed. They grew and stretched, their lights shifting until Tony was surrounded by figures, androgynous and indistinct.

 _Our brother…_ the harmony of voices whispered through his mind. _We have been waiting such a long time for you, little brother, waiting for you to find us._

Tony’s brow furrowed in confusion, though he knew the curiosity was not so sharp as it should have been. It was muted, distant, as if he didn’t really care about the specifics of the answer to the questions bubbling up within him. He should care, though. He knew that. It was odd that he didn’t, wasn’t it?

“Who are you?”

There was no laughter, no audible or visual cue, yet Tony could feel the amusement of these beings before him.

_We are your future, Tony Stark, and you are ours. We are intertwined. Bonded. Family._

“But what does that mean?”

 _We will leave that up to you_.

The world came slamming back around him like a tidal wave against his consciousness. The sounds of battle roared in Tony’s ears and he was almost overwhelmed by it for a moment. Thanos stared at him, mouth agape, in the same spot he’d been when he and everyone had vanished, as if no time had passed. Tony pushed himself up on legs that were far less shaky than they had been just moments before. It was as if he’d found a new well of energy and it buoyed him, carrying him on.

“And I am Iron Man.”

The words felt right on his lips, and yet somehow incomplete. They were wholly true and yet still not quite enough. He was Iron Man, but he was also more than that, so much more. As if welling up from somewhere deep inside him, a smile curved Tony’s lips as he found the right words.

“I am _Creation_.”

Their voices echoed together, and Tony could feel nothing but joy as he raised his fingers and snapped.

Time.

Reality.

Mind.

Soul.

Power.

Space.

Creation.

There was nothing they couldn’t achieve, and now there was nothing that could stand in their way.


End file.
